BEIRUT — “We need to push continuously,” Omar Rajeh, founder and co-director of the Lebanese contemporary dance company Maqamat, told Al-Monitor. Rajeh is also one of the organizers of the Beirut International Platform of Dance (BIPOD), a festival whose 15th edition is taking place April 4-13. It features companies from the Middle East and around the world and seeks to establish itself and contemporary dance as mainstream fixtures on the Lebanese cultural scene.

“I am afraid of being static, afraid that the festival might become routine,” Rajeh said. “In order to prevent this, every year I feel we are pushing harder and harder, thinking of something new to develop the festival, to build it up and push it further on many levels.”

Rajeh founded BIPOD in 2004, after returning to Lebanon from studying theater in England. Back at home, the cultural events, or lack thereof, in the early 2000s left him underwhelmed.

“I felt that there were not enough performances,” he explained. “I thought we could start gatherings with artists I liked, so we held the first edition [of BIPOD] in 2004, and there was a lot of interest from the audience.”